


A Common Courtesy

by Ellisama



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Friendship focused, Gen, Nino centric, Reveal Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 19:00:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5881975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellisama/pseuds/Ellisama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With an Akuma attack almost every other day, Nino really should have connected the dots between Adrien’s disappearances and one of Paris’ most beloved heroes before he transformed in front of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Common Courtesy

They were surrounded. What had started as a nice evening with his best friend quickly turned into an Akuma induced nightmare. They used to appear once every two weeks or so, but in the past few months they had started popping up left and right what seemed like every other day.

It was tiring for all of Paris. Ladybug and Chat Noir defeated the akumas time and again, but while the material damage could be repaired, a certain sense of unsettlement could not be erased from the minds and hearts of the people with a lucky charm.

Everyone was wary to some extent, but few looked as tired as his best friend did. With every passing day, the bags beneath Adrien’s eyes grew. His father had scolded him for staying up too late and bringing his career into jeopardy, but the young man had merely shrugged.

“I just… can’t sleep. There is too much going on in Paris.” Adrien had explained when Nino asked him time and again.

For a second Nino considered pressing him for more answers, but a certain hopelessness in Adrien’s eyes kept him from asking any more questions. Instead he sighed, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Then let’s go out tonight, and ease your mind with a beer or two..” He proposed instead. “It’s the summer holidays. I know you have a busy schedule, but even you should be able to have a night off.”

Nino expected him to decline the invitation, as he had done a million times before, and for a second Adrien looked like he was considering it. Then he smiled, and nodded to Nino’s great surprise. “Perhaps you’re right. I don’t have anything scheduled tonight or tomorrow morning anyway, though something might always come up. As long as you’re not angry that I might cancel last minute or halfway through because of a last minute appointment, you’re on tonight.”

“Adrien, if I minded that too much, our friendship would have ended years ago.” Nino said, a tired smile on his face. Truly, Adrien’s modeling career called for a lot more emergency photo shoots than Nino could have ever guessed.

“Am I that bad?” His friend asked, frowning deeply.

Nino had chosen not to answer that one. Several hours later, Adrien met him at the expected time and place, and they had hit the bars for the first time since Nino turned 18 earlier this year and were having a great time.

That was until a waitress tripped behind them, dropping a tray of wine glasses all over a customer as she fell. The man cried in outrage, and drawing the attention of the entire café.

“You…. You imbecile!” He shouted, pointing at his ruined designer suit.

The waitress blushed a bright red in shame, and humbly started mopping up the mess she’d made. “I’m so sorry sir, it was an accident!” She apologized over and over again, but it didn’t calm the scorned customer’s rage.

“Do you have any idea how much this shirt costs?” He bellowed loudly, making the young woman apologize even more profoundly. “You idiot! Is this the Hospitality of ‘ _la bouteille gris’_?  I want to speak to the manager, right this instance!”

The manager quickly came and calmed the man down somewhat, but at the expense of the poor waitress. Nino watched helplessly as she was fired on the spot for a little mistake. The girl quietly took the verbal abuse until he dismissed her, after which she ran up the stairs to a backroom.

Really, Nino should have known what would happen next, but perhaps it was the three beers he and Adrien drank before the girl tripped, or a sheer and uncharacteristic moment of naivety on his part. Regardless, they should have ran away from the café, or at least defended the girl. For when she returned, her face was no longer tear streaked, but instead covered with a dark mask. She held up a tray of wine bottles that seemed to be filled with a dimly green radiating liquid. This could not be good.

Besides him, Adrien stiffened in what Nino could only assume was fear.

“I am Hostile-pitality, and I will be your host tonight!” The possessed waitress cried triumphantly. “Allow me to show you to meaning of true hospitality!”

“Oh no..” The manager muttered, backing away from her. All of Paris knew by know what those butterfly shaped masks meant. He quickly ran to the door, but with the flick of a wrist, the waitress sealed it shut.

“Let us out!” A young woman cried, crawling at the window. But it would not give in.

The waitress laughed mercilessly, her cruel high-pitched laughter nothing like the sweet voice she had used before. “Nobody will be allowed to leave until all customers are happy! The customer is king, isn’t that right Monsieur Mercier?” She spat at the manager, who wordlessly shook his head, his eyes wide with fear and disbelief.  But she was not interested in him, and instead turned to the man who had scorned her in the first place. “Are you satisfied with the service, sir?” She asked him, her voice sweet as honey.

The man puffed up his chest, and Nino gathered that he was not from Paris. “Let us out of here, you freak!” He cried out, trying to push the akumized waitress away from him.

Hostile-pitality only laughed cruelly, and took a one of the half broken wineglasses from the man’s table. One of her wine bottles opened itself, filling the glass to the brim with a thick, green liquid. “That doesn’t sound like a yes to me. Allow me to improve our service. This one is on the house!”

When the man didn’t take the glass from her hands, she smiled darkly and poured the contents all over his face. “Oops! How clumsy of me!” she giggled while the man screamed in agonizing pain, clutching his burning face while he fell to the ground.

That was the moment the rest of the trapped customers started panicking, running towards every possible exit in a futile attempt to escape. From the corner of his eye, Nino spotted Adrien sneaking up the stairs.

“Where are you going Adrien?” He called after him, but Adrien did not slow down or indicate he heard him at all. “Hey, wait for me!”

Once they reached the top of the four staircases, Nino caught up with him. Adrien seemed surprised to see him. “I’m going to look for a way out of here. You stay here.”

“Like hell I will!” Nino exclaimed perhaps a bit too loud. From downstairs, cries of distress could be heard, along with a vicious giggle and the distinct _cling_ of breaking glass against concrete.

Adrien ignored him, focusing on the locked doors to the staff rooms instead. Before Nino could see how he did it, Adrien had broken the lock and opened the door with what seemed no more than a slight trick of his fingers.

Nino followed him inside, pushing his full weight against the door of the emergency exit. It didn’t even bulge, the dark circling magic restricting them from leaving.

“It’s no use, they won’t open.” Adrien called out from the other side of the room, his fingers gently gliding over the locking mechanism on the window. Whatever magic he had worked on the lock of the door, it didn’t work against actual magic, and the windows remained firmly shut.  “Oh, damn my luck.” Adrien muttered under his breath, his eyes darting around rapidly.

“We’ll have to wait it out. Chat Noir and Ladybug will be here in no time, as usual. Surely they have a way to get in.” Nino tried to calm him, but Adrien quickly shook his head.

“Unlikely. Everything is locked shut with magic. They have no way to get in.” He reasoned, and Nino realized he was right. A terrible feeling of dread settled into his stomach, but he suppressed the urge to panic. Adrien was calm, and so would he be. He followed his friend down, where they proceeded to try to open every window they could find, in vain.

“But Chat Noir has that destructive power thingy, doesn’t he? He’ll break through this easily.” Nino tried to reassure Adrien, but the frown on his face deepened only further.

In an uncharacteristic fit of anger, Adrien slammed his balled fists against the locked window. Dark magic circled around his fingers for a second, and then repelled him with the same force he had used, causing Adrien to fall back. “There is a slight flaw in your logic.” Adrien seemed to utter underneath his breath, but it didn’t make sense.

“What?”

As if the dark look on his face had never been there, a warm smile appeared on Adrien’s face while he threw up his hands in defense. “Nothing! How about you check up on the people downstairs, help them hide while I keep searching for a way out of here.”

Nino looked at him as if he had gone stark raving mad. “Adrien I’m not splitting up. Have you ever watched a horror movie? That’s the way people get killed.”

“But it’s the only way to get out of here.” Adrien pleaded, but before Nino could ask exactly what he meant, the floor beneath his feet started to disintegrate.

“Watch out!” His friend cried, pushing him away from the infected area that was slowly turning green. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together, especially after a malicious laugh followed by a high pitched cry was heard from below.

“Her drinks are acidic. If Ladybug and Chat Noir don’t hurry up, we might just all burn away before they arrive!”

With another quick fingered movement, Adrien opened a dimly lit supply closet on his right. “Nino, hide in here.” He ordered him with a voice that sounded nothing like him at all.

“So you can play the hero and get yourself killed? Not likely mate.” Nino countered, shaking his head fiercely. There was something strange about his friend tonight, but before he had time to ponder about it, a second green ring of acid started to creep up between the floorboards. “New plan: let’s both get into that closet!” He cried, dragging Adrien in before the idiot could get himself killed.

Once they were both safe inside, Nino took a second to order his thoughts. There was no way out, or they would have found it by now. Ladybug and Chat Noir were taking their sweet time, and the possessed waitress downstairs was quickly disintegrating the entire building, including them. On top of all of that, Adrien was acting strange. “Now what?”

Adrien closed his eyes, releasing a breath. “Now… now I’ve got no choice.” He uttered in a tone akin to despair, his visibly shaking hands running restlessly though his hair. When he opened his eyes again, there was a desperate resolution in them, the one you could see in a mad man’s eyes right before he jumped into the fire, and all Nino could think was ‘this is not good’. “Just… just promise me you won’t freak out, okay? And pretend you don’t know me. Actually, just stay in this closet until the danger is over and I promise we’ll talk.”

Nino narrowed his eyes and put his hands on his shoulders, shaking his friend in an attempt to pull him out of whatever was going through his mind, but with a strength and nimbleness Nino didn’t know he possessed, he slipped from his grip. “Adrien, what the hell are you getting at?”

“Just. Promise. Me” Adrien gritted out, his eyes still darting around nervously.

If making a strange promise was going to keep Adrien from having a panic attack, Nino could roll with that. “Okay man, I promise.” He said, and it did the trick. All nervous jittering was gone from Adrien’s posture, and a small smile spread on his lips. “Now please, could you explain what all of this is about? You’re acting not like yourself, man.”

But Adrien ignored him, instead pulling a small black doll from his pocket. Or, rather, it flew out on his hand the second Adrien touched him. Nino’s eyes widened, and without thinking he took a step back. “What…?”

Adrien held up his hand, and cried: “Plagg, claws out!”

In the dark, the light that suddenly surrounded Adrien was all the more clear. A ring of black magic started radiating from Adrien’s ring, and started to glide over his body, leaving behind a very familiar black mask and leather suit. Nino watched in dumbstruck awe as his longtime friend vanished and the local superhero Chat Noir took his place. Chat Noir immediately dashed out of the closet they were hiding, leaving a stupefied Nino in his wake.

For a moment his mind failed to respond to what he had just learned, and like a zombie he watched Chat Noir – no, _Adrien_ – summon his destructive powers and smash straight through the closed window. The sound of breaking glass overruled the screams of panic from below,  and slammed Nino’s jaw shut.

Then his eyes went wide and his heartbeat skyrocketed in his throat. Adrien was Chat Noir. Adrein, his long time best friend and local male supermodel, mister ‘I have to be home before midnight’, was the daring, cheeky half of Paris most illustrious superhero team. It didn’t make sense, and yet, right in front of him was all the evidence.

Without thinking – like he could anymore at this point -  he walked straight up to Chat Noir, turned him around and cried out: “Holy fuck, Adrien! It was you all this time?!?”

Chat Noir shot him a look that was positively murderous, and Nino quickly remembered that he had promised to pretend to not freak out and pretend he didn’t know him.

Well, _fuck that shit_. “Holy…. You mean, this is why you’re always running off, huh? How did this even happen? How long have you been doing this? How did I not notice?!?” Once he started talking, the questions didn’t stop, nor did his hands stop shaking until Chat Noir steadied them within his own.

“Relax, please.” He said in calm tones, nothing like Chat Noir at all but so much like Adrien that Nino could do nothing but obey. He took a deep breath and released it, keeping his mouth shut. Adrien smiled, and continued. “Ladybug will be here any moment, and she won’t be able to get in on her own. I need you to somehow get her attention and guide her in here while I do my what I do best.”

Nino understood now why he had broken that window instead of a door, and nodded wordlessly, still dumbfounded. “A-and what is that?”

Chat Noir grinned wickedly. “My job.”

And just like that, Chat Noir jumped down the stairs. No, he didn’t run down the steps, he dove down, performing one acrobatic feat after another until he was downstairs mere seconds later, out of Nino’s vision.

Nino wanted to follow him, but Adrien was right. Chat Noir had showed up over four years ago, and if he had been Adrien all this time… well, Ladybug and Chat Noir were veterans by now. It didn’t sit right with him to hide while his best friend was in danger of getting melted with acidic wine, but he had been given an job to fix this mess. The quicker this entire nightmare of a night out was over, the faster he could sit Adrien down and get some goddamn answers out of that boy. Four years. Four _fucking_ years. His mind still reeled, and he tried to focus his thoughts on the task at hand before he slipped back into shock.

The answer to his problem was fairly easy: he submitted a distress call to the Ladyblog with a picture of the opened window and a description of the Akumized waitress, addressed it to Ladybug and allowed modern communication to do the rest.

It worked like a charm. After two tense minutes in which Nino listened to every cry coming from the lower floor, fearing for Adrien’s life with every broken bottle, Ladybug gracefully leapt through the broken window, landing next to him. Her eyes were fearless, but her voice was kind when she addressed him.

“You sent the distress call, right?” Nino merely nodded, trying not to stare at Paris most beloved hero. “Thank you for that. Is Chat already with her?”

Nino nodded again. With her was a very nice way to say that his best friend was possibly dead on the floor, but he let it slide. Ladybug tended to have that effect on people. When he blinked again, he forced himself to look past her charm and self-assured behavior. The wheels were turning in his head, and suddenly things started falling into place while he followed her hot on her heels when she ran down into the bar. How could he have been this blind all this time?

When then opened the door, he caught a glimpse of Chat Noir, smiling cheekily while he artfully dodged one bottle of wine after another. The bottles broke hit the wall just centimeters from his friend’s ever moving body, the juices that exploded from it eating away the very concrete of the walls. Nino gulped, a shiver of fear passing through his body. A single hit could be fatal, if the damage done to the furniture and the walls was any indication.

The second Ladybug entered the fray, Chat Noir’s eyes lit up like a bonfire, and his fighting style changed. No longer was he trying to catch the scorned waitress’ attention with witty puns in an attempt to protect the civilians hiding in behind the bar. Instead, his eyes were locked on Ladybug, a wicked smile on his lips that was nothing like Adrien at all. _(Or was it? Did he even know him, really?)_

Alya had been his girlfriend of many years now, and he often had to listen to her analysis of Chat Noir and Ladybug. Lately she had been writing about their fighting styles, or more specifically, how Chat Noir tended to lack a sense of self preservation when it came to protecting his partner. Only now that he knew who the boy behind the mask was, did it hit home exactly why Ayla had been so upset about it.

Nino watched the scene play out before him as if it were a movie, not his friend risking his life and limbs to save people he didn’t even know. It was the apron, the source of the akumized waitress’ power, he realized. So did Adrien and Ladybug. It was a wonder Adrien was still breathing after four years of this. Not once, but five times in a row did he shield Lady Bug with his own body. The suit protected him to some extent, but wayward drops of acid and pieces of glass still dug their way into his skin.

With practiced ease, Chat Noir kept the Hostile-pitality’s attacks focused on him, every move a distraction from Ladybug, yet his eyes ever  on her, attuned to her every move. Nino winced when Chat Noir didn’t dodge quite quick enough and a few drops of acidic wine fall on his cheek, leaving a dark red patch of skin just underneath his mask. Nino cried out but Adrien hardly grimaced, gracefully somersaulting away from the enemy, taunting her with a surprising amount of cat related puns that Nino would have never though Adrien to be capable of coming up with on the spot.

Thankfully, it was over before Nino could die of a stress induced heart attack. No matter how questionable their methods, they did work. While the enemy was distracted, Ladybug used her lucky charm – a wine cooler of all things – and with a strange maneuver that included a bar stool, a wine opener and one of Hostile-pitality’s own acid wine bottles, managed to take off the apron and destroy it before his friend could get permanently maimed.

Ladybug’s magic snatched the dark butterfly from the air and purified it, returning the obliterated bar to its former glory. The poor girl fell from the ground, her dark powers cleansed from her. She looked around helplessly, a dazed, scared look in her eyes. Nino knew exactly how she must have felt.

“Well done, Kitty.” Ladybug held up her fist for Chat Noir to bump, and Nino watched dumbstruck as they slipped into the well known mannerisms of Paris’ most beloved Super Hero team.

“All thanks to you.” Chat Noir bowed gracefully, and instead of meeting her fist bump, gently took her hand and kissed it. Ladybug quickly pulled it back, but the endearing smile on her lips was real.

Something beeped, and Chat Noir looked defeated for a second, before he regained his smooth persona. “Now, I’d love to hang around, chat and treat my lady to a well deserved glass of wine, but this cat is all out of energy.”

Ladybug nodded understandingly, an amused smile still gracing her lips. “A rain check, then.”

Adrien’s face lit up like the night sky on the fourteenth of July. “ _Claw_ -some!” He exclaimed, making Ladybug shake her head and rolling her eyes. “Tomorrow, at midnight on the Arc de Triomphe?”

“Go, Chat, before I take back my words.” She urged, and another beep sounded from Chat Noir. He smiled apologetically, not unlike a Cheshire cat, bowed deeply and hurried out up the stairs.

Nino allowed himself to be led out of the bar with the other victims, his arms supporting the shaking waitress with every step. She looked as if she was about to throw up, and Nino hoped she could keep it in until after he had let go of her. Ladybug carefully checked up on all of them until the police arrived for a better victim support. The man that had insulted the waitress was quickly taken to the hospital to treat the burns on his face. The Lucky Charm had reduced a lot of the damage, but the skin remained burned all the same. The poor waitress watched the man with glazed over, unseeing eyes, while Ladybug tried to talk some words of comfort into her. She was in shock, merely nodding every now and then. Nino knew how she felt.

Dazed, he looked at his phone. Alya had send him a thousand messages ranging from flirty to desperate, along with a dozen calls. Of course, she was the one who had received his distress call. She ran the Ladyblog after all. He quickly texted her that he was fine, and forwarded it to his parents for good measure, asking them to pick him up.

He’d been caught in an akuma attack before – hell, he’d been akumized himself once and nearly killed the entire adult population of Paris on the same day – but that was normal at this point. But the revelation that Adrien had been Chat Noir all this time, risking his life for the good of the people right under his nose.

He needed answers, but he knew he wasn’t getting them tonight if he went home now. Adrien was probably safe at home already, taking care of those nasty burns he’d received. Upon a whim, Nino called him, if only to ease that restless feeling under his skin. To his surprise, his friend picked up on the second ring.

“Are you alright?” Was the first thing Adrien asked before Nino could get a single word in.

Nino was taken aback for a second, promptly forgetting what he was going to say. “What are you talking about? I should be asking that! I saw you get burned!” He bellowed into the phone, drawing the attention of several onlookers. Luckily, Ladybug was nowhere in sight.

“I’m still in the building, waiting for Pl- before I can transform again and get out of here.” Adrien sounded tired, but triumphant. Like fool, Nino thought.

“Dude, I’m coming to get you.” He said before he thought about it, and started walking back towards the pub. Avoiding he police would be hard but… well he didn’t really have a choice anyway.

But before he had to worry about getting past the cops, Adrien quickly shut him down. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be up again in a few minutes, and fade right into the night.” It was a pun, and even though his voice was too nervous and tired to be Chat Noir, it was just like him.

That settled it in his mind. “Adrien, I…. I need answers. And you probably need a bandage or two. Don’t cut me out now. You promised me answers.”

From the other end of the line, he heard Adrien sigh deeply. “… I did.” He admitted. In the background, an unknown male voice said a few words, but Nino could not quite make out the words before Adrien spoke again. “Meet me behind the café le Chien Blanc, two blocks from here, in fifteen minutes. We’ll talk there.”

Adrien hung up without allowing him to respond after that. Nino sighed deeply, and started walking towards  the café. They used to eat there when they were still in high school. He’d taken Alya there on a date once, mostly because Adrien had bailed on him two minutes before he left home. Some possessed Opera singer had shown up halfway through, but Chat Noir and Ladybug had saved the day.

In retrospect, it all made a lot more sense why exactly Adrien had been a no show. Looking back upon the last few years, a lot of things suddenly made a lot of sense.

And yet, despite living in one of the largest magic infected cities of the world for all of his life, never in his wildest dreams would he have guessed that Adrien had at some point become a leather clad, magic-powered vigilante. The two seemed opposites, black and white. For them to be the same person was a plausible as Hawkmoth surrendering in the name of freedom and love.

Or, as Marinette Dupain-Cheng being Ladybug.

**Author's Note:**

> About the names: I only watched the French version, so I am unaware if any names are different. Sorry! This story is mostly focused on friendship, though there will be some background ships peeking in. I want to write a different kind of reveal fic, focusing more on the impact it has on Adrien and Nino’s friendship since this fandom already has so many romance focused stories. However, Nino is a smart guy, and once two people know, it’s not really a secret identity anymore, is it now? Three more parts after this!


End file.
